


it's not a secret (why do you keep it?)

by audenrain



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Frottage, Hand Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 12:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audenrain/pseuds/audenrain
Summary: Lup was in her swimsuit, dripping wet, her golden hair curling in darkened tendrils over her shoulders. There was one particular droplet that seemed to be catching the sun like a diamond, inching down her thigh. Lucretia blinked hard and focused back down on the open pages of her journal.A vignette from the year of the beach world.





	it's not a secret (why do you keep it?)

**Author's Note:**

> Necessary disclaimer: I'm a cis, and aside from the general excitement that comments provide, I am genuinely eager to hear any feedback on all aspects of this story. If I've contributed to transphobia here in any way, I absolutely want to know. Thank you!
> 
> Title is from She & Him's _Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?_

“Is there a picture of me hiding in there somewhere?”

Lucretia jolted, then scooted back in the sand as a few drops of water hit her knees, perilously close to her journal. “I - what?”

Lup was standing over her, hands on her hips, her face obscured by the halo of the mid-morning sun behind her. Lucretia lifted a hand to shield her eyes. Lup was in her swimsuit, dripping wet, her golden hair curling in darkened tendrils over her shoulders. There was one particular droplet that seemed to be catching the sun like a diamond, inching down her thigh. Lucretia blinked hard and focused back down on the open pages of her journal.

She _had_ been drawing, but not Lup - not this time. It had been a bird, swooping lazily above the ship, that had initially caught her attention - it had a crest of red feathers down its back that almost reminded her of a dorsal fin - but she hadn’t added anything to the picture in a good while. Lup had stepped out of the ship perhaps a half hour ago, a thin dressing gown wrapped around her, and Lucretia’s pen had frozen. Above, the bird kept on soaring, its vermilion crest rippling with unseen muscles. Lup reached a hand up into her hair and tousled it, as if to get the breeze on her neck. Her eyes were shut and yet Lucretia felt sure she knew she was being watched.

At first, she’d hollered for Magnus, and the two of them had spent a while waist-deep in the water, volleying a rubber band ball back and forth. (Lucretia hadn’t realized they had that many rubber bands on board to begin with.) That was fine; Lucretia mostly managed to keep her eyes on the paper and not on the lean, corded muscle of Lup’s arms or all that tan skin on display. But then Magnus wandered off, shaking himself dry like a dog, and Lup flopped back in the water to float on her back, her hair spread out around her, bobbing gently on the waves.

Lucretia wasn’t sitting too far from the water, but the sand sloped just enough to allow her a view of the gleaming little pool of water in Lup’s bellybutton. She could still see the bird wheeling overhead, off in the right side of her periphery, but it could have been a dragon for all she cared. Lup was drifting like she didn’t have a care in the world, and Lucretia was torn between desire, dense and hard to think through, and the ache of envy. Was she really as calm as she looked? Was she really so at peace, in the water of an alien planet with no guarantee of a continued food source and no knowledge of the seasons -

Lup’s eyes opened.

Lucretia’s head snapped down. The sun was really beating down on them today. Surely if her cheeks were pink, Lup couldn’t say a thing.

But now Lup stood above her, one hip cocked, a perfect contrapposto. If only Lucretia was a sculptor.

“Lucretia,” said Lup, sounding so guileless and yet taking so _long_ to say her name.

“Lup?”

“Take a swim with me, homie.”

Lucretia shifted her feet in the sand, digging her toes in until she found the layer that hadn’t been warmed by the sun. Her face still felt too hot. “I’m good here, thanks.”

“But that bird drawing looks awesome, good and finished - hey, can I see?” Lup reached out, and Lucretia hugged her journal to her chest. Lup actually looked - hurt? No, that was the beginnings of exaggerated offense.

“Wet hands,” Lucretia said, grimacing apologetically. It was a convenient excuse. There _were_ drawings of Lup in here, page after page in some cases. There were plenty of drawings of the others, too, but Lucretia felt - though it was probably born from anxiety - that something in the ones of Lup would speak louder than the rest.

“Huh,” Lup said, glancing at the book as if to say _later_. “Well, go stow it on the ship and get your swimwear, you little degenerate. I’ve got something to show you.”

“De _generate_ -” 

Lup, already turning away to wander back down to the water, didn’t look back, only laughed. “I have eyes!” she called, and Lucretia pressed her lips together till her teeth dug too hard into the insides. She made herself stare at the back of Lup’s retreating head, and no lower.

She didn’t have to go. Lup was a flirt, and she’d always known this on some level - but back home, she was almost never the target of it. They hadn’t spent any time together outside of training, too, but it was most likely a matter of options. There were very few here on the ship. Merle was too old and too weird, Taako was her brother, Davenport was the captain and also decidedly no fun about anything, and Barry… well. He’d been a recipient in the beginning. But it hadn’t taken long for Lup to realize that it meant too much for him, and she hadn’t so much as fluttered her eyelashes at him since.

That left Magnus and Lucretia, who was beginning to feel as though she was bearing the brunt of it. And she didn’t understand how, if Barry’s feelings had been clear enough to Lup, her own feelings were not.

She didn’t have to go. She reminded herself of this as she pushed to her feet. She could go inside, have a cool drink of water, pull out her paints. It was getting on towards lunchtime - she could go fishing, or gather some berries from the thicket not far from the ship.

Instead, she met Lup down at the water within a few minutes, wearing her swimsuit - a crimson one-piece, regulation IPRE, because unlike Lup it hadn’t occurred to her to bring a nicer one from home. She left her journal and her glasses on the ship - it would be fine, probably. She could see things up close easy enough, and Lup had irritatingly perfect vision.

Lup was bouncing on her toes, the water nearly up to her neck. “Come on,” she said, and pushed off backwards until she had to tread water. Lucretia waded in.

“Where are we going?”

Lup winked. “That’d be telling, baby."

 

 

The ship sat in a hollow of beach surrounded on both sides by groynes of massive stones, left by whoever had lived here before. Further up the slope, there were the remains of a foundation - someone used to have a beach house here. An enormous one. There were more of them, off to the south, but to the north there was only a rugged wall of black rock. It stretched out far enough that none of them had ever swam past it - but it seemed to Lucretia as though Lup was trying. 

“How far - are we going?” she asked, panting a little. She wasn’t used to such long stretches. Lup paused in her strokes to tread water.

“We’re close, I promise,” she said. “In fact -” She ducked beneath the surface for just a moment, and when she came back up, pushing hair out of her eyes, she was smiling. “Yeah. Super close. Come on.”

It couldn’t have even been a minute before she stopped them. “Okay,” she said, facing the stone wall, which hollowed in a little where they were. “Follow me.” As if Lucretia hasn’t been all this time -

Then she ducked under again and vanished. It took Lucretia a moment or two to gather the nerve to follow. (She wasn’t afraid of the water, but - alien planet and all - who knew what could be lurking under the surface?)

Apparently, light.

When she opened her eyes, it was to an eerie bluish-green glow, a colder type of light than the sun above them. It was coming from a crack in the rock, a vertical opening just a few feet wide and maybe twice as tall, and Lup was disappearing into it, her silhouette outlined in the strange light.

It was moss, she realized as she got closer. The opening was lined with a soft springy moss, a few tiny blooms pushing out of it, and the moss was bioluminescent. _Intensely_ so, considering how close they were to the surface. What was the purpose, this far from the pitch black of deep waters?

She couldn’t linger long. She didn’t have the lung capacity. So she followed Lup’s kicking legs further into the hollow, as it got wider and wider, and then the walls were gone, and the ceiling too. She pushed up to the surface, breaking it just a second after Lup.

“Oh my god,” was the first thing she said - more of a gasp than anything else. The air smelled heady with greenery and wet stone. The moss wasn’t quite as dense here, but it grew along the floor and walls and even the ceiling a little, in sporadic patches.

Lup was silent, tirelessly treading water, the only sound in the cave the movement of the water as she pushed it away and pulled it in. Lucretia, on the other hand, did not have endless stamina. She rested an arm on the edge of the cave floor, giving her aching muscles a break, and she looked around. She couldn’t take it in fast enough.

“Lup,” she said at last, and when she looked over, Lup was watching her too, lashes glittering with beaded water.

“You like it,” Lup said, no upwards inflection.

“How does it grow this far in, without the sunlight? And _why?_ We can’t be even ten feet below the surface! What does it eat - something in the water, when the tide comes in?”

Lup laughed, but it didn’t sound like Lucretia was the butt of the joke. She shrugged. “I dunno, four-eyes, you tell me. Or - on second thought -” And she swam in closer, till Lucretia had to turn her back to the stone and hook her other elbow over the edge to keep steady. “Don’t think about it just now.”

Lup’s voice was suddenly soft. She wasn’t treading water anymore - she was holding onto the edge, too, her arms penning Lucretia in.

“No?” Lucretia’s voice came out high and thin. Lup’s face was so close she could count the clusters of her lashes, spiked together from their swim. “Is there - something else we should be doing?” God, that was bad. She didn’t know how it came so easy to Lup.

Lup bit her lower lip, sucked it into her mouth, slowly dragged it free. It was torturous and mean, Lucretia thought distantly. “I don’t know, doll, can you think of anything better?”

She was _so_ close now. Did she really mean to do it? Was this still just good fun, fluster old stuck-up Lucretia into admitting that she had _feelings_ , that she had _desires_ , that Lup could have her in a second if she ever wanted?

That was cruel, and it didn’t sound like Lup at all, and yet -

“Lup…”

“Lucretia,” Lup said, and she felt every syllable in her bones. The kiss of the _l_ against Lup’s teeth, the crackle of the consonants that followed, the whisper of the _tia_ ghosting across her lips. She shuddered, let her eyelids flutter a little, and then she focused herself, looking a predictably smug Lup in the eyes.

“Is this a game?” she said, and Lup’s face froze a little. “Because it’s gone a little far, I think.”

Lup arched an eyebrow. “Say again?” She had leaned back just enough to give Lucretia the space she needed to haul herself out of the water to sit on the stony edge. The air was chilly, but not awful. She felt a ripple of goosebumps and ignored them.

“If this is just - just funny for you, well - it’s not funny for me.” She felt exposed, both by the clinging thin fabric of her swimsuit and the way Lup was looking her in the eyes, with perfect focus. Lup didn’t know where she’d gone wrong, Lucretia realized. She was trying to puzzle it out. “I’m not interested in being jerked around.”

“What about jerk-”

Lucretia saw the joke coming a mile away, and held up a hand to dispel it. Amazingly, it worked. She’d never felt in control of an interaction with Lup in all the time they’ve known each other, but Lup looked - not exactly subdued, but she was definitely paying attention.

Lucretia took a deep breath. Her voice came out steady, she was very proud to find. “I understand entertainment is in short supply these days, but if you’re only here to watch me squirm, then I’d much rather be alone.”

“Holy shit, you have _got_ to stop setting me up like that,” Lup said, when it was clear that Lucretia had said her piece. “Watch you squirm! Yes please - _wait_ , hold on -” And she grabbed a hold of Lucretia’s ankle as she started to pull her legs out of the water. “Will you chill for a hot second and read the room here, I’m clearly _into_ you. In a real way. If I was playing games I wouldn’ta led you out to my super secret special alone time cave!”

Lucretia hesitated, then let her other leg slip back into the water. Lup’s thumb was drawing circles on her anklebone. She looked around at the moss. “But the -”

“Oh my god, honey, you didn’t think I came all the way out here just to look at some - well, okay, I’m not gonna pretend the glowing plants aren’t fucking cool. But still. This is where I come when I gotta - well.” Lup cocked her head. “Not that there’s any pressure, obviously, but you just seem so _stressed_. Even here on this paradise planet.”

The hand on her ankle let go; instead, Lup was reaching up to touch her chin, a gentle request. Lucretia couldn’t quite look her in the eyes. She settled for a freckle just above Lup’s left eyebrow. “If you just wanna hang out here, that’s cool too. We’ll talk, we’ll laugh, I’ll tell you about this one time Taako took a dare to put his whole head into a bugbear’s mouth.” Lup’s thumb brushed the hollow beneath her bottom lip. “If that’s what you want.”

What Lucretia wanted was for Lup’s thumb to move a little higher. It was just a digit, but she wanted to kiss it. She couldn’t say that. She couldn’t speak at all. She felt pinned, and she felt painfully obvious, and more than that, she felt bizarrely _good_ about that. It was a little scary, but how could she not trust Lup - perspicacious, witty, lovely Lup, whose eyes were crinkling at the corners as she watched Lucretia’s impression of a butterfly pinned to a board.

“Tell me I can kiss you,” Lup said, and suddenly Lucretia thought her rib cage was going to shatter wide open.

“Kiss me,” she burst out, too loud in the echo chamber of the cave. Her own voice was still ringing in her ears when Lup planted both hands on the stone and pushed herself up out of the water to press a kiss to Lucretia’s lips. It was light, and brief, and Lucretia wanted to fall into her until every part of them was touching. She nearly did, until she noticed the shaking of Lup’s arms.

“Come here,” she said, and scooted back. The stone was surprisingly smooth beneath her. The tide had to come in at some point, then, if it was so worn -

Nope. She wasn’t going to get distracted. Lup was climbing out, and crawling on hands and knees, and Lucretia found herself spreading her legs, inviting Lup in.

“Fair’s fair,” Lup said, kneeling now, resting her hands on Lucretia’s shoulders. Her golden skin was washed in soft mossy light, and her gleaming eyes were so close, and there was something heavy in Lucretia’s throat. Her pulse thumped in her ears. “It’s your turn.”

She kissed Lup, hard, maybe a little too hard - it had been decades since she kissed anybody, and she didn’t know how she’d managed to tell herself that she hadn’t missed it. She scrambled to push herself up into a kneeling position too. Her whole body was yawning with hunger, and she needed to feel Lup against her - breasts and belly and thighs, ribs expanding under Lucretia’s hands. She could taste the minerals from the water on Lup’s lips, and on her tongue, the last vestiges of sweetness from a hard candy. Lup was arching her spine, letting Lucretia use that extra two inches of height to bend her backwards. She was clutching at Lucretia’s arms, and Lucretia felt so powerful and so malleable, all at once. She wished suddenly, desperately that she wasn’t wearing the damn one-piece - she wanted to feel the skin of Lup’s torso as it shuddered against her. She tried to settle for spreading her hands as wide across Lup’s back as she could, roaming, feeling shoulder blades shift beneath her touch.

Lup’s mouth was opening wide under hers, inviting her in again, and now her hands were in Lucretia’s hair, pulling pins out. Distantly, she could hear them clattering to the floor. Her knees were starting to hurt a little and she didn’t care. Lup was starting to push back, biting at her lips and grinning when Lucretia squeaked in surprise. It wasn’t bad, not at all, but it felt like the first time. God, it had been so _long_.

Her wet hair was finally coaxed out of its bun, falling in coiled pieces that Lup couldn’t stop touching. It was too tangled to run her fingers through, but she gripped it like a lifeline. Squeezed a little at the roots, and Lucretia was surprised to find that that - wasn’t awful. The cave was so quiet that even the smallest sound felt deafening, and letting it out was, if not defeat, then at least a concession of some kind. Lup smiled again, catching Lucretia’s lip between her teeth and tugging. Lucretia let out a breath and it shook like a leaf, but she was past the point of caring. Lup could find as much pleasure as she liked in making Lucretia come apart; it was hardly a one-sided affair.

“You know what else this moss is good for, other than mood lighting?” Lup asked, twisting a thick strand of Lucretia’s hair around her finger. “We don’t have to be killing our old bones like this.”

And she stood, helping Lucretia to her feet, and led them a little further in, where there’s a sizeable patch of moss on the floor, and she laid them down, side by side. For a moment, Lucretia just wanted to stare - there was no fear of being caught this time. Or at least, she couldn’t possibly be more caught than she already was. Lup was lying half on her side, half not - she was twisting forward at the waist, leaning in to press her lips to Lucretia’s collarbone, and her legs were so long, and muscled, and the curve of her hip was just _begging_ to fit into the palm of Lucretia’s hand -

“Can I touch you,” Lucretia blurted out, sort of in a single word. Lup smiled again. Lucretia loved how much she smiled.

“Of course,” Lup said, and tipped her head back, tossing her hair a little. “You just gotta tell me how you want me, gorgeous.”

“Back,” Lucretia said, a little too quickly. “On your back, I want -”

What to say? The enormity of it was impossible. She wanted everything at once, and she didn’t know where to begin. Twenty-one years of running, and these days she hardly even touched herself except when the tension got too great. She forgot what it felt like to take her time, not to drive herself relentlessly towards a peak that would give as much relief as a rubber band, finally worn thin enough to snap.

But she didn’t need to put it into words, because Lup went down easy, content to trust her. Every swell and hollow of her body was outlined in the glow. Lucretia ran her hands along the light, up Lup’s thighs and hips, over her belly, provoking a ticklish little giggle, skirting the outside of her breasts and then settling there when Lup pushed up just a little. Her nipples were visible through the thin material, and when Lucretia brushed her thumbs across them, Lup let out a pleased sigh.

“Are you gonna be a big tease?” Lup asked, sounding not at all bothered. In fact, she was stretching her arms over her head as if settling in. Her legs fell open, just a little. Lucretia swallowed.

“I’m not trying to be,” she said, and put a knee on the ground behind Lup’s legs. She leaned over, elbows on either side of Lup to prop her up. “I just want this to be right.”

“It will be, baby, have no doubt.” Lup bent one leg to graze the inside of her thigh along Lucretia’s side. “Now are you gonna make a start on that touching thing, or should I be taking the reins?”

No, Lucretia decided, she was very content up here. She let Lup know with a hand on the place where her arms crossed above her head. Lup flicked a suggestive eyebrow, but she didn’t say a word. Didn’t even move a muscle, except to part her lips a little. And _that_ , somehow, was the hottest thing Lucretia had even seen - Lup spread out beneath her, still and waiting, an open invitation to touch her in any way Lucretia likes.

She started with the ears.

Lup expected her to go in for another kiss, and that was precisely why she didn’t. She grazed her nose across the tip of Lup’s, and then kept going, past her face to the pointed tip of her ear. Kissed it, as lightly as she possibly could, and felt Lup twitch. Traced the edge of the shell with her lips, grazed her teeth over the lobe -

“ _Fuck_ you,” Lup gasped, but she was mostly holding still, with what seemed to be considerable effort. Lucretia took a second to enjoy that, and then she took the lobe into her mouth and sucked. Lup whined, her shoulders rolling beneath her, and Lucretia could feel her getting hard. She pressed down, into that solid growing heat against her hip, and Lup’s whine rose in pitch - her arms were tense now, flexing, but not fighting at all.

Lucretia had to kiss her again - didn’t know how she’d resisted this long already. Lup’s cheeks were flushed and so were her lips - had she been biting them? - and her eyes were so very blue -

Lup dove up to meet her as soon as she was close enough. She licked into Lucretia’s mouth like the kiss could sustain her - god, she was sucking Lucretia’s tongue into her mouth and dragging her teeth across it _just_ on the edge of too hard and it was filthier and better than anything Lucretia could have fantasized.

“Please,” Lup hissed as Lucretia ground down again. “Come on -” She bit Lucretia’s lip again, harder, bucked her hips. It was tempting to let her keep writhing, but there was such a plaintive edge to her voice that Lucretia couldn’t possibly deny her. She sat back, just long enough to hook her fingers in the elastic of Lup’s swim shorts and pull them carefully down. Lup made a tiny sound as her cock bounced free, and there was just a moment of struggle to untangle their legs and pull the briefs all the way off. Then Lucretia was back on top of her, one hand on the ground to hold her up and the other wrapping around Lup. She rubbed her thumb over the head and tried to spread the wetness beading there. Lup groaned, a thick sound that seemed to be dragged out of her.

“Tell me what you want,” Lucretia murmured, and then immediately kept on kissing her, because she would have to have inhuman self-control to resist the way Lup looked just then - eyes fluttering, head tilted back, mouth open and god, _whimpering_ -

“ _This_ ,” Lup managed, when Lucretia gave her a moment to breathe. “Don’t stop.”

Lucretia couldn’t imagine stopping for anything. Lup was pushing up into her grip and reaching into Lucretia’s hair again, pulling her close, panting into her neck. Lucretia couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe her _luck_ , and she had to say so.

“Shut up,” Lup huffed, yanking a little at Lucretia’s roots. Shit, that did something. Lucretia felt the arm holding her up quiver just a little. “You shut the fuck up, I’ve been perfectly f _u-ucking_ straightforward - about my interest - _oh_ -”

“Yeah,” Lucretia agreed. She had no excuse. It didn’t matter, anyway - they were here now, and there were more important things happening - Lup, using handfuls of her hair to guide her head into another kiss. Lup, moaning against her mouth, her jaw going slack as Lucretia twisted her wrist a little. That was fine - Lucretia kissed her anyway, and Lup made a feeble effort to kiss back, but she looked like she was melting into the ground. Lucretia’s wrist was beginning to get sore - if only she’d written a little less that day - and her back was starting to ache, too, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t slowing down for anything. Lup was close, she knew it, and when her body went from boneless to tight as a bowstring, Lucretia was ready. Lup let out a shocked cry, and she pulled so hard on Lucretia’s head that it _did_ actually hurt a little, but whatever, because she was coming into Lucretia’s hand, and Lucretia would never ever as long as she lived forget the look on Lup’s face.

The moss had a third benefit: she wiped her hand off on it while Lup was still recovering.

“Oh,” said Lup, blinking as she came back to herself. Lucretia felt warm, watching her - not just the heat of arousal (there was that too, she could feel her pulse between her legs and her scalp was still tingling in a way that was not unpleasant) but warm _inside_. Peaceful, maybe. Or something like it.

“C’mere.” Lup was reaching for her, raising up one knee so Lucretia was sitting on her thigh. “You’ve been watching me for years.”

“Yes,” Lucretia whispered. She had no idea what to do with her hands until Lup reached out and took them, lacing their fingers together.

“How long would you say?” Lup asked, and her eyes were half-lidded but Lucretia still felt the full force of their focus.

How long? Lucretia couldn’t think of the answer. How long had she thought Lup was beautiful? Forever. How long had she been thinking about it - really thinking, not just glancing? Fifteen years, at least. But time flew when you were on the run.

Lup didn’t push it. “I’m feeling all melty after that,” she said, tilting her head a little to one side. Why did Lucretia feel like she was being studied? “I don’t really feel like moving much.”

“That - that’s okay,” Lucretia replied, and her voice shook just a little, because Lup tensed her leg, and that twitch of muscle was enough - fuck, she was far gone.

“Yeah?” Lup let go of her hands - they fell useless to her side - and touched her thighs, now, sliding up to grip her hipbones.

“I mean, I - I -”

“Did you ever think about this?” A real movement now, not just tensing - Lup pushed up, and her leg slid along Lucretia in a way that was so suddenly, _blindingly_ good, and Lucretia let out this terrible, humiliating sound, a shattered _ahhh-!_

“Yeah,” said Lup, and she was right. Lucretia didn’t know what to do with Lup in her fantasies - too cool to ever really look twice at her, surely, bookish Lucretia with her big round glasses and her too-straight brows… Most of the time, she had to imagine it like this: Lup, cool and aloof, _letting_ her get off, less because she cared and more -

“You’re goddamn beautiful like this.” And didn’t _that_ shatter that concept. Lup was looking up at her, in control but enraptured, too. Lup’s hands on her hips tightened, almost bruising, and they guided her, building a slow, easy rhythm. Lucretia shut her eyes, certain they were going to cross. Fuck. _Fuck_ . “You’re perfect. You’re _perfect_ .” It was nonsense, and it sent little shocks through Lucretia’s body anyway. “One of these days I’m going to eat you out until you cry, but right now I just want to watch you ride me like this, just grinding on me like that’s enough -” And just hearing that - _eat you out until you cry_ \- if Lup ever wanted blackmail material, she was in luck, because the noise Lucretia let out sounded an awful lot like a sob. Her eyes were dry but her whole heart was in her throat.

“Sweetheart,” said Lup, and Lucretia felt the word in her cunt like a heartbeat. She opened her eyes. She had to see.

“Shit, _look_ at you.” Lup was grinning like she’d won a prize, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes. “Are you gonna get off like this?”

 _Maybe_ , Lucretia thought hazily, but she didn’t voice it. Lup was driving her thigh up at an impressive pace, and suddenly she fell forward, catching herself with her hands on either side of Lup’s body. There was moss gathering under Lucretia’s fingernails, because she couldn’t help but tear at it a little. It was soft and yielding, and everything felt so sharp _._ _Poor moss_ , came the thought, unbidden, and she nearly laughed but then Lup was running a thumb across her mouth and she had to part her lips. Oh god, but she should’ve put her mouth on Lup. Why hadn’t she? Why had she wasted the opportunity?

“Oh?” Lup said, and turned her hand a little to slip a pointer finger past Lucretia’s lips. “Yeah?”

 _Yeah._ She felt the whorls of Lup’s fingerprint, tasted the salt of her skin. There was another finger at her lips, and she took that too. Licked between them. Lup pressed down on her tongue.

“Baby,” Lup said, sounding a little choked, incredulous, “you better fucking believe this isn’t a one-time deal.” And her free hand slipped around to settle in the small of Lucretia’s back, and she pulled, and suddenly Lucretia couldn’t do anything except drive down, down, _down_ and muffle her cries on Lup’s fingers. Her whole body was shaking, and Lup just kept meeting her thrusts, and there was nothing else - just heat and slide and _pressure_ -

She collapsed. Right on top of Lup, with no warning, and no ability to slow her fall. She heard Lup’s air leave her, too, and she felt guilty but how could she move after that -?

Lup rolled her, so gently, till at least half her weight was on the ground instead of Lup’s lungs. “Oh, honey,” she said, and she was stroking Lucretia’s hair. It was half-dry, now, and the curls were well and truly tangled together. “Tell me you knew that.”

 _Knew-?_ Lucretia managed a quizzical hum, just enough to get her point across. Lup wrapped a leg around her. She was so warm.

“Tell me you knew this wasn’t a one-time deal. Luce. I _like_ you. I like you so much I can’t even flirt right anymore. Have you seen Magnus? That is one specimen of a man, and I don’t give a shit.”

A pleased hum, this time. Lucretia can’t remember ever feeling like this - genuinely incoherent, and too far gone to care.

“Lucretia.”

“Lup.” That wasn’t too bad - one syllable.

A hand ran down her spine once, twice. “The tide’s gonna come in soon."

Well, that hadn’t been what she expected.

 

 

 They stayed, playing with each other’s hair, kissing, lazing around, until the water had completely flooded the cave floor. And still, Lucretia didn’t want to move. Her muscles were still a little sore, and the thought of swimming all the way back…

“You’ll be okay,” Lup insisted, and she punctuated it with a kiss on the cheek. “And if you’re not, I’ve got a spell for it. You don’t mind some temporary gills, do you?”

**Author's Note:**

> I discovered, partway through writing this, that I am not the only person who wanted to write Lup leading Lucretia to a secluded cave. But I figured, the more the merrier - can you really have too much Lupcretia?
> 
> Find me on [tumblr.](http://promache.tumblr.com)


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